Christopher
Koch

Christopher Koch was born and educated in Tasmania. His paternal ancestors were part of the German Lutheran diaspora that arrived in South Australia in the 1840s. His Anglo-Irish maternal ancestors came to Tasmania in the same period. Most of his life has been spent in Sydney, where he worked for some years as a radio producer in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He has been a full-time writer since 1972, winning international praise and a number of awards for his novels. One of his novels, The Year of Living Dangerously, was made into a film by Peter Weir. Koch has twice won the Miles Franklin Award for fiction: for The Doubleman and Highways to a War. In 1995 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian literature.